Memory Monday: Window "Pain"

Sorry my Memory Monday is a bit late.  It's been a bit crazy today.

See that scar on my finger?  You know, the scar that I circled in bright red?  This is the story behind that scar.

It was wintertime, January of 2006. We had lived in our current house for all of 5 or 6 months.  I was about two months along in my pregnancy with Troy.  Now, this is important.  Because I honestly was super crazy the whole time I was pregnant with Troy.  The kids would walk by me, and I'd be like, "DON'T WALK SO LOUD!!!!  AAAAHHHH!!!!"  In that spring we had planted some grass, and I went out and used the weed wacker on the weeds growing above the new grass on the whole entire lawn.  And we have a big freaking lawn.  Everything made me mad, everything made me sad.  I was the epitome of crazy.

So that day, my sister Lexi and I were going to get together to scrapbook.  You know, back when I had time to do cool things like that.  I went to the store with my two kids in tow, bought some stuff, and when I came home I thought, "Wouldn't it be great if I shoveled the snow off the walk for when Lex comes over before starting dinner?  Look at me be productive while having morning sickness!"  I had set the meat out on the counter, along with our other groceries, and went outside to shovel.  It wasn't quite dark out yet.

So I shovel-shovel-shovel, and then I went to go back inside.  Right as I reach for the doorknob, I hear a "click".  Jakob, all of a little over two, and Brock at 9-ish months old, had been inside.  And...Jakob had just locked the door on me.  Of course my keys were inside my house, and of course we hadn't made a copy of our key to give to anyone else or to set outside the house for just such an occasion.  In a nice voice, I said, "Jakob, honey, open the door for Mommy.  Just turn the little, um, thingy, the other way."  And my 2-year-old tried flipping the dead bolt part of the door.  Then I go, "Jakob, honey, keep trying.  It's the bottom one."  Of course he didn't get it.  I mean, he was two.  So then I knocked on the door, and the urgency built in my voice.  "Jake, please open the door.  You just have to turn the thingy on the knob.  Please, Jakob.  Wait-I'm going to the back door-please let me in."

And Jakob then ran downstairs.

I kept knocking.  I checked the front door.  I checked the back door.  Everything was locked-including windows.  Tight-like unto a dish.  Which, normally, would be a good thing.  On that day, not so much.

I ran around the house.  I rang the doorbell, and heard Jakob run upstairs.  I begged at that door for him to let me in.  He ran back downstairs to watch TV.  I climbed down into our window well and banged on the window, hoping he'd peek through the blinds at me.  Nada.

I sat down to try and figure out what to do.  Now, a normal person would think Hey!-run next door and ask to borrow their phone and call a locksmith!  But remember, I was not a normal person at this time.  I was Crazy Pregnant Nat.  I thought about going next door, but to call Pete, but knew he couldn't get to me for another two or three hours because of traveling back from work.  I thought, hey, I could just hang out over there until Pete gets home, but no, that would leave my kids in my house all alone.  Hmm, what in the world should I do????

I did the only "logical" thing that I could think of.  I would just have to break in.  Literally.

I grabbed a big hammer thing, and tried to find a suitable window.  Which one?  I didn't have a ladder (hm, still don't), so it would have to be one into which I could easily climb through.  The only one that I could see that would work was our big sliding glass door in the backyard.

So, right now I'm making it sound like I was being all calm and collected at this point.  Far from it.  Which kind of goes without explanation, because hi-I was about to break a big glass door.  But my mind was all, "THE MEAT IS ON THE COUNTER-IT WILL GO BAD!!!!  BROCK IS DOWNSTAIRS CRYING-WHAT IF HE'S HURT?!?!?!?  I WILL NEVER REACH MY CHILDREN!!!  THEY ARE GOING TO DIE IF I'M NOT WITH THEM RIGHT THIS SECOND!!!!  AAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!"  Kind of Mama Bear meets Axe Murderer meets Xena the Warrior Princess.

I took my big hammer, and swung at the door.  It hit.  And bounced off.  Nothing!  So, I try again, but a little harder.  Everyone and their dog was like, didn't you know it was going to shatter everywhere?  Um, no, I did not, having never broken a window/door before.  I actually thought I'd break a little hole right by the handle so I could reach in and flip the lock, and the glass would just have a little hole in it.  But no.  The whole entire pane shattered into little pebble-like pieces.  But then I discovered something else-our door was double paned.  So I had to do it again.

Each time I swung, I turned my face away and closed my eyes.  Smart point-the only smart point of the night-for me.  But, stupid point for me-I was holding my gloves in my left hand as I swung with my right.  Why I didn't put my gloves on while swinging my hand at broken glass is beyond me.

I hit through the second pane, and barely realized that my finger got sliced in the process.  I immediately started crying.  There was glass everywhere in my kitchen, and outside.  I went to the kitchen sink for my finger, dripping blood as I went.  And then I got on the phone, trying to find anyone that I could to come and help me.  I called my mom's cell, then my parents' house, then Lexi's cell, then my dad's cell, then my dad's work.  No answers anywhere.  I called Pete and told him what happened.  I went downstairs and said, "JAKOB!  Why didn't you let me in?!?!?"  He was calmly sitting on the couch, watching TV.  I think he thought he'd be in trouble if he came back up, which is why he was hiding.

I finally got ahold of my mom, and she came over.  In the meantime, I tried to sweep broken glass with a bleeding finger.  I tried to calm my baby Brock while bleeding everywhere.  We went to the urgent care.  My skin on my finger was hanging on by a thread, so they basically pulled it off and then sewed it back on.

For the next week I had a brace thingy that I couldn't get wet.  Showering left-handed (I'm right) was quite the adventure.  Then I had to take the brace off and could barely bend my finger.  That night my family had to stay with my parents until a replacement door got put in.  We propped up some cardboard to help keep snow out of our house.

And now I have a reminder of my Crazy Days.

And my glass sliding door doesn't work as well as the original.

My Thermostat is on Crack

I love fall.  But with the awesome weather comes some not-so-awesome thermostat fiddling.  You know, because it's cold in the morning (I need heat!), then warm in the day (uh oh, too hot-better flip on the a/c), then cold at night again (and back to the heat).  Not that I'm constantly flipping back and forth-I try to either hold out when it's too cold and don a sweatshirt and/or blanket, or just stay a little bit warmer than I would like.

But yesterday it was cold in our house at the kids' bedtime, so I decided to turn on the heat.  Now our downstairs vents are still closed (because we've been mostly on a/c, and if the vents are open then I would have to wear a parka).  I thought nothing of it, because the thermostat was set to turn itself off after reaching a certain temperature.  Pete and I watched a show, exercised, etc.  When I came upstairs, though, I felt like I was stepping into a sauna.  The temperature?  83 degrees!

WHY did the thermostat not kick off?  Dude.  It's done this every once in a while (like three times ever), but I've caught it before it gets too high.  So then I flipped it to a/c.  And...it did nothing.  So then I forced it to blow cold air.  We also opened a few windows to try to cool it down even just a little bit.  We slept with the windows open, which means that this morning-you guessed it-it was freezing cold in our house again.

But I didn't dare touch my thermostat, because I didn't want it to do the weird stay-on-even-though-I'm-supposed-to-turn-off thing.  Also?  I don't know where it senses what temperature it says that it's at.  There are times when I am boiling, and it says it's 66 degrees, and times when I'm shivering under a blanket when just the air in the house should keep me warm enough on its own.  What's up with that?

My only conclusion: crack.

Just Can't Get Enough!

A couple of Sundays ago, this happened:

How, you may ask? Pete sat down. Yep. Just plain old sat on Ivy's bed, and the frame broke. Just add it to the list, my dear. Here's a closer look:

We "fixed" it. It's very white trash, but we turned the bed around so you can't tell. (We drilled long boards along the frame on both sides. I should submit it to the website There, I Fixed It.)

That day at church I was joking with a couple of friends about "what's going to break next? a kid's arm?"

...

...I shouldn't have done that.

Because then our cute little Tuna decided to up and croak. This is all I have left of it now:

It was about time, I guess. It should have probably lasted only about 6 years, and it lasted 12 years. My stomach started getting all churny at the thought of having a car payment again. Ugh.

But.

Look at Tuna's replacement!

I think this car was especially meant for us. It's a Chevy Cobalt, it has five million buttons in it (including seat warmers-how cool is that?), we got it at a great price at a great rate... I'm still trying to think of a name for it. But our minivan doesn't have a name, so maybe it will be nameless for a while.

In the non-broken side of my life, my parents decided to be all awesome (like they always are) and got me some new trees for my backyard!

I can't wait until they're all big and pretty and giving us lots of shade.

This one has lost a lot of leaves, though, in the insanity we Idahoans call "wind". (If I could, I would seriously dome my whole backyard. Like a big greenhouse or something. Stinking wind. Which blew all five copies of my Sunday paper all over my neighbor's backyard yesterday. Sheesh.)

So, back to the whole "what's going to go wrong next?" You know, besides car wrecks, and sickness, and broken air conditioners, and cameras, and other car deaths, and beds. That's right! The fun hasn't stopped there!

Pete is back in the the hospital today, with his 6th kidney stone. (No matter what/how much he drinks, he will always produce stones. He's just lucky that way.) You can read about his last experience here and here. Pete went in last Thursday, and the doc told Pete to take some drugs and he should pass it on his own. Things seemed fine, until last night, when his pain came back with a vengeance. After a few very frustrating hours at the hospital, and a 2 a.m. call to our urologist, Pete got admitted to the hospital in the wee hours, and he'll be getting surgery tomorrow.

Today I had this song running through my head. (I can't POSSIBLY imagine why. *sigh*)

(P.S. Young Dave Gahan looks like Shia LaBeouf. And 80s dancing is really funny.)

Thirty-One-Derful Day

As if we needed ANOTHER thing of ours to break, my camera decided to stop taking pictures yesterday! And...it was my birthday. YAY for perfect (comedic?) timing! Oh, it still takes pictures, but they look like this:


And...because I was fiddling around, thinking/hoping it was just some button that got pushed, I accidentally erased all the pictures that were on my card at that time, including one of my dear friend Steph and me together. (I see her once every year or two. Grrr.)

My camera came back to life for a brief moment, and Pete caught this gem of a picture.


So, that's my one record of my 31st. YAY! But, I still wanted to blog about my beautiful day, so we're going to do a little Paint recreating. Hold on, it's about to get ugly.

So, here's me and Pete at the Playmill Theater Friday night. We're saw "The Foreigner", which was hilarious! I had seen it once in high school, but didn't remember much about it. I LOVE the Playmill-they always do an amazing job.

(Yes, he looks a little pale and a little hairy. Just trying to keep it real, yo.)

And here I am yesterday at lunch with my kids and Pete, at Chili's. YUM! I'm sitting next to Jake, and we had just taken a way super cute picture right before the camera died, that-yep-got erased.

(That would be a burger and fries, and a blackberry lemonade.)

After Chili's we went to the temple visitor's center, and watched the movie about Joseph Smith. It was really good.

And here's a picture of me opening gifts. Jake made some airplanes for me, my parents got me a willow tree for my backyard, Kar got me some couponing supplies, Arin gave me some super yummy fudge, and Pete gave me the first part of Glee on DVD and an external hard drive for my digital scrapbooking stuff.

Oh, and I'll be getting a new camera for my birthday as well.

I decided to have cookies instead of a cake for my birthday. We stuck a couple of candles in the cookies. Betcha can't guess what I wished for!

I liked turning 30, but 31? Not sure how I feel about it yet. Although I can say "thirty-one-derful", which reminds me of one of my favorite movies, "That Thing You Do!" At first they try to spell their band name, the Wonders, like Oneders, and everyone calls them the "Oh-Need-ers". Liv Tyler is all, "Look! The Oneders!" and Steve Zahn is all, "It looks like the Oh-Need-ers", and Liv holds up her finger, and says, "No, ONE. The ONE-ders." And Steve says, "Got it. It looks like the Oh-Need-ers."



So anyway, that about sums up my birthday. It was really great, in spite of the camera gods shunning me. (Go here for kicks and giggles.)

Getting Pruned, or, The Silver Lining

Unfortunate occurrence #1: the car wreck. I missed my red minivan. It was gone for two weeks. (It's back as of Friday-hooray! But it was making funny noises, so it goes back in tomorrow-boo.)

The silver lining: Since we're kind of homebodies anyway, it wasn't the biggest deal in the world to be without a car. I got a few things done around the house, like fix a sprinkler drip line, and weed a lot, and clean a bit, and replace light bulbs, etc. I half-heartedly attempted to potty train Ivy, who is totally okay with using the potty before baths. But when I tried to get her to go, say, in the morning, she sat there, and yell-cried at me, giving me this look of utter contempt. Maybe I need to show her the Tinkerbell undies that I got. (Ivy loves "Tee-beh".)

In the meantime unfortunate occurrence #2 happened: our air conditioner leaked. Kind of a bit, onto our basement floor and onto bottoms of boxes.


(You can't really see it on this picture very well; it's just the still-wet cement two days after getting it all sopped up. Who knew cement stayed wet for so long?)
The silver lining: Fortunately, I've kept our cat's food and all that near there; if I hadn't, who knows how long it would have been before discovering the awesome wetness, and who knows how much further it would have spread.

Because I was stuck at home, my schedule was wide open to have the fixer guys come. And they fixed one part of it for a small fortune. Then, it leaked again the next day, and the guy came and fixed another part of it for another small fortune. I think it's good to go now.

But the leak turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It forced me to pull out all our boxes and go through things. And because I'm a minimalist, it was way super awesome to get rid of a bunch of stuff that we haven't used in a long time.



I also pulled out a bunch of books and put them out on our bookshelves. They had been in boxes because little hands kept bending them. But those little hands have grown up a bit, so now I feel safe pulling all those books out again.


And also, because I love to organize, it was awesome to put a bunch of things back in place and all together. I can Tetris the crap out of anything. And since I got my car back, I was able to haul off a bunch of stuff to D.I. and to the dump. I feel lighter!

Which is ironic, because I just read this scripture the other day: Helaman 15:3-...yea, the people of Nephi hath he loved, and also hath he chastened them; yea, in the days of their iniquities hath he chastened them because he loveth them. I looked "chasten" up in the dictionary, and it says "... to prune of excess, pretense, or falsity, refine; to cause to be more humble or restrained; subdue." So, monetarily, we've been chastened in the last couple of weeks. But maybe it's because I needed to get pruned of some of my excess.

*sigh* I love blessings in disguise.

Old and New

Old: Here is part of one of our old couches, the Aztec couch. It was a hand-me-down from my parents. We had it for 8 years; my parents had it for at least 8 years before that. The footrest on one section wouldn't kick in any more-it leaned to the left. You'd try to move it and the back would come completely off. Oh, and it used to be a 5-piece sectional, down to three, then down to two. It fell apart, section by section. And no, it didn't come frayed like that.


Old: Downstairs couch #2. The plaid couch. The best nap you'll ever get in your life couch. The cushions can make an ideal house/fort couch.

The plaid couch is also a hand-me-down from my parents; they bought it when I was 6. So it's the almost 25-year-old couch. The can't sit on it, because you'll sink so far in couch. The springs are popping through the padding couch. The toothpaste mushed into the arm couch. The lumpy, bumpy, hanging on by the skin of its teeth couch.

Old: My boys thinking that butts-and butt pictures-are so awesome.


Old: My dad. (KIDDING!!) It's just old news that it was his birthday the day before Easter, and I just haven't blogged about it for some reason. In summary: my dad rocks, his birthday was fun, and I wish I could be more like him.


Old: More furniture. This chair is featured in pictures at my parents' house when I was, mmm, 1, I think. Of course, it didn't have that huge crack on the seat back then, but 30 years and jumping little boys will do that to vinyl. It lays back really really fast, and has put more dings in my wall than I care to count.


Old: But not in super bad shape-the upstairs couches. We've had them for nearly 5 years, but again, they were hand-me-downs from my parents, and I swear they got these when they got the Aztec couch. So, maybe 15 years old?


New: Jake's pajama pants. I sewed 2 pairs for my growth-spurt boy in about a half hour. I love fleece-it's so forgiving. I gave them a huge hem, too, so that when he shoots up another 2 inches in two months, I'll be able to just let them out and they'll still fit.

New: Upstairs couches. Sage green. And microfiber! (Translation: perfect for kids.) My kids love that they can rub the fabric one way, and it gets all dark, and then rub it the other way, and it's light. Hours of entertainment.

New: My zeal for finding old people on New Family Search. Both frustrating and fun.

New: Downstairs couches. No more holes! No more sinking in! No more crazy footrest! Dark brown, man-made leather, and very comfy.

New: Upstairs chair, that actually goes with the downstairs set. It still reclines but slower, and with a button!

New: Rules and regulations for my kids about couch kindness. No jumping, no climbing, no cushions off, no markers/crayons/writing utensils, no food. Of course, these rules are actually all old rules, but now we need to enforce them.
So now I guess I need something borrowed and something blue. (I've actually been thinking I want to paint my downstairs family room a light blue. Hmmm.)

Decisions, Decisions

I didn't know which blessed event I wanted to post under "most recent mess":

The mangled cake?


The permanent marker on the back door? (Which I did remove with rubbing alcohol. Oh, it took off the marker, but it also took off some paint as well. Neat.)


Or maybe the broken Spider-man 3 DVD?


Yep. I just could not decide.

Lost

This is what happened to our computer yesterday:

Well, not literally. But it completely crashed. Just...curled up and died. We don't know why, or how. And we were going to lose EVERYTHING. Everything like every picture of Ivy from birth on. Like all of my little files (which would be like losing my mind). Like the I-Tunes music we've purchased. EVERYTHING.

Luckily, Pete is a master genius when it comes to computers. Luckily, he was able to move stuff around to our other computer. Luckily, before we had to completely wipe the hard drive, we saved some of our stuff.

Unluckily, we did end up losing the pictures from January and February of 2008. Unluckily, we lost some of our I-Tunes music. Unluckily, we lost the blurb digital scrapbook that I had been working on. (Luckily, though, I've been too busy to work on it much lately, so I wasn't very far into it. Still, though.)

Lesson learned: Back your stuff up! Put it on a disk far, far away. Or, have two computers, and double copy everything to both. And after doing that, still do a disk far, far away.

Now a moment of silence for my lost blurb book...

Broken

I love my boys. Really, I do. Which is probably why they're still alive right now.

Just kidding. Well, not about the love thing....

Okay, let me start over. Lately we've had a lot of things break. Some of it has been the kids' fault, some of it is just the nature of "stuff". But it always seems to happen all at once. I already mentioned our car's woes. But now our other car has joined in, with an almost flat tire, a broken seat belt, and the glove compartment refuses to shut. Fixed the tire, but the other stuff not so much.

My boys have discovered a new hang-out: under the kitchen sink. And they've taken the phrase "hang-out" literally, and probably hung on the sponge-holder thing, which now refuses to close all the way.


Here's my sad Charlie Brown Christmas tree. See the ribbons clumped? And the anti-ornamented spot at the bottom? That's why the tree came down the day after Christmas, my friends.


Plus, I didn't want any more ornaments to meet the same demise as these two did:

The snowflake on the left my mom attempted to tape back together. The star on the right was one of my favorites, and Memo chewed the arms off. (Although I think I liked it more when I thought it was wood; I then discovered it was styrofoam. But still.)

Our doorknob on the back door broke, so we were sporting this fine, white trash, duct tape look for a while. The front door deadbolt broke the day after. Luckily I'm somewhat of a handywoman (cough! hack! -sorry, give me a minute to collect myself after the laughing hysterics stop), and they've both been fixed. (In my case, "fixed".)


We can't even keep cookies unbroken around here.


Other stuff in the broken category: a picture frame for Pete's diploma, the door on our entertainment center, Pete's headset to the computer, crayons-always, a few of the kids' books that I put on the bookshelf (silly me, thinking books belonged on a bookshelf), a couple of drill bits from my attempt at hanging a shelf in our garage (handy, remember?), half of our toys because it's apparently the cool thing to hit toys with other toys...the list goes on and on.

But...things not broken: three little boys' chicken necks. Yet. (Just kidding. Kind of.)